Drilling, completion operations and production operations for oil and gas often creates millions of gallons of wastewater. This wastewater is often pumped into a reservoir. The wastewater must be removed for continuous operations. Off-site disposal and trucking the wastewater is costly. Natural evaporation is slow and inefficient. What is needed is a cost efficient way to remove large quantities of wastewater with as minimal environmental impact as possible.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,449,849 (1984) to Horn et al. discloses an oil drilling wastewater evaporator using a land based pump to spray via nozzles the water all around the edge of the reservoir back into the reservoir. A float can support a splashplate to increase the rate of evaporation from the land based nozzle.
The present invention provides a floating device that supports over a dozen high speed atomizing fans. The floating device is tethered from the sides of the reservoir or anchored in the reservoir. Power (preferably hydraulic) is supplied from a land based power unit. Hydraulic fluid, once cycled for power to the fans and the water pump, is used to pre-heat the water, thereby adding efficiency to the entire system. This hydraulic fluid also is used to transport the land based engine cooling heat out to the unit. Another heat exchanger on the land based power unit removes the heat from the coolant and adds it to the oil coming back from the return lines before it goes to the storage tank. All the components can be mounted on a custom trailer to enable portability among several sites.